


Sensation

by narsus



Category: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
Genre: Foreshadowing, Introspection, M/M, Pre-Movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-03
Updated: 2012-04-03
Packaged: 2017-11-02 23:45:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/374697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narsus/pseuds/narsus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter suspects of course, before it all goes so very, horribly, wrong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sensation

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy belongs to John le Carré, StudioCanal and Working Title Films.

It’s always a bad day when he comes home early. Today, like all the others before it, is particularly awful. At least it will be if he lets it. There are too many things he refuses to think of. All that matters is that there’s a full bottle of scotch at home, that he could drink straight but will be better warm, with a measure of lime cordial and a spoon of sugar to take the edge off. He won’t be drinking for pleasure tonight and right now the only thing he can taste is his last cigarette. He doesn’t even like Gauloises. Not really.

There’s nothing significant about today anyway. Nothing definite that he can look to. Except, everything is on edge. There were mutterings and fearful looks, and his boys have been spoiling for a fight for a fortnight already. Something is _wrong_. They can scent it in the air, like a pack of wolves. Or jackals. That might be the better comparison. Picking up the pieces, stealing off with the weakest of the littler, calling to each other in the mocking language of the damned. Today they have been restless, scenting blood, but also hesitant because it’s blood in their own den, and he has no answer to that. He’s already smoked a pack of those bloody Gauloises and is half way through a second. Damn Tarr and his random acts of entropy. Peter refuses to call it kindness. Three packs of cigarettes, four cups of tea and his lunch being brought to him does not kindness make.

“You always like ‘em when… ”  
“Piss off, Ricki.”  
“Right. I’ll just get that cup of tea then.”

Tarr is alarmingly good at being placid when Peter is in those moods. It’s as if, all of a sudden, the bottom drops out of the world, and suddenly they’re standing, at right angles, on stairs that really aren’t going anywhere at all. Suddenly, Peter is furious, over what, he can barely imagine, and Ricki is pacifying him with tea and cigarettes. The chain of command shifts and the boys, _his_ boys, are going to Ricki first, rather than face his wrath.

“He’s fit to kill today.”  
“Come off it. Just wants ‘is tea, does Mr Guillam. You know what he’s like.”  
“I know what he’s like and-“  
“And you’ll be wise enough to shut up about it. Am I right?”  
“Sure, Ricki. Sure. Just having a bad day.”

Ricki has spent the entire day running interference for Peter. In their own damn office, certainly, but Peter is, secretly, grateful nonetheless. He can feel the prickle of that telltale chill along his spine, that scalphunter sixth’s sense, that warns him of _something_. His senses are attuned to the environment around him and that sudden recalibration of something, anything, has, in the past, been enough to save his life. Except, which is worse, this time it chills him to the bone because here of all places he should be safe. London Station is safe. It should be. It must be. And yet…

So he comes home early, as early as he can without causing too much of a stir. Nobody else really notices of course. Other sections like to pretend that the scalphunters don’t exist after all. Doing the dirty work, cosh and carry as they euphemistically put it, beneath everyone else’s notice. Except, today, when the head of the scalphunters has packed up early and gone home. When Ricki Tarr, with his glib smiles and watchful eyes, has been running interference all day. When all the rest of the pack have closed ranks, watching, waiting, eyes on Guillam’s retreating back as if waiting for the signal to drag all the world right down into the gutter.

There are possibilities and probabilities of course. Peter can feel it in his bones. Soon, there will be some calamity, some strange and desperate _reason_ that it will all fall to ruin, but he can’t quite put his finger on it. Everything has changed, so rapidly, so recently, so disastrously. It doesn’t bear thinking about, though he wishes, hopelessly, that somehow it would all resolve itself into sense. He can’t but help wondering what Jim would have done in similar circumstances, but Jim is gone now and everything has become precarious. Jim who, once up a time, drove him home when he was too drunk to see straight, who’d declined the invitation to come upstairs with the softly teasing admonishment, in French, that it would be quite improper. Of course Jim had known, and realised fact, when others would have seen mockery and slander. Now it seems, without the likes of Jim Prideaux, as if the Circus will simply fold in on itself and nothing will put a stop to that.

Peter’s clearly drunk, sprawled across the sofa, mug in hand, when Richard gets home. He’s been drinking for hours already, easily swallowed gulps of sweet lime making it seem as if he’s not chasing the dark heat of the scotch at all. The skin of his lips has already been stripped away by the amount he’s consumed. It would be enough to prompt any sane man to anger first, before worry, to come home to a spouse trying to drink away all his terrors. Not that they can consider themselves in any way legally bound to each other, save by the hefty penalties they would face if their domestic arrangements were in any way likened to matrimony.

Peter doesn’t resist as the mug is taken from his hand, nor does he complain when Richard pulls him upright. Though it does come as a surprise when, after some manoeuvring, he’s coaxed back down, so that he’s lying on his side, his head in Richard’s lap. Richard’s fingers thread through his hair gently.

“I don’t know how you can drink this rot.”

Peter doesn’t feel the urge to respond. It’s Richard’s fault for disliking that particular alcoholic combination anyway, he thinks dimly, tired and amused by it at the same time. The hand stroking his hair is soothing and, though he can hear Richard making some half-hearted attempts at admonishing him, his tone is fond and indulgent, rather than anything else. If only they could stay like this, the thought crosses Peter’s mind, muddied by the alcohol. If only he were really just a glorified secretary at a reasonably successful export company. It’s a good cover after all, a good argument to make when he’s posted overseas for weeks at a time, certainly, it’s a valid excuse for his fussy adherence to something approaching fashion. Just some senior manager’s vapid assistant, possessed of the job simply because of connections rather than talent.

It’s hard to tell how much of his story Richard actually believes but he suspects that it’s most of it. Richard, for all that he is a clever man, is blinded by presumption. Everybody is. He might not quite believe that Peter holds his position merely as the result of some familial connection in the past but his suspicions tend towards the shockingly mundane. Though Peter is careful to withhold names, he’s certain that Richard suspects him of an ongoing flirtation with any number of men who could be described as his boss. It helps to play to that suspicion at any rate, so that it’s easy to avoid all other questions, because Richard believes, erroneously, that Peter is kept around because management like the idea of a pretty young thing who will giggle and simper as well as any girl.

The rhythmic touch of Richard’s hand against his hair lulls Peter. His limbs feel oddly weightless and he feels no urge to move or communicate at all. He should be content like this. His is, after a fashion. Yet even now he wonders if matters will soon enough take an inevitable turn. He cannot, not in the long-term, carry on like this, with Richard. That Richard cares for him is irrefutable but the person that Richard holds close in thought and action isn’t exactly Peter himself. For all that he cares for Richard, Richard does not, cannot, see Peter as he is. Richard thinks him gentle and innocent, and perhaps, in a darker sense, naive and not nearly all that bright. It suits Peter well enough but it’s not much of a relationship in that light. And of late it has begun to feel more and more like playing yet another role that any number of assignments might require of him.

Perhaps then, in the end, that is what his gut is telling him. That eventually, sooner than he might have anticipated, all of this will end. Perhaps the feeling of tension is all his own projection. Or perhaps not. It may all be an extension, a domino effect, of ideals falling, in sequence, in neat and ordered rows. Richard may only be one piece of the puzzle, the Circus another. Peter hesitates to guess at the scope of it all. For the moment at least, eyes closed, Richard’s hand in his hair, he decides that he’s probably better off not knowing.


End file.
